Museus e colonialidade: uma análise da exposição de longa duração o Museu do Estado do Pará

Abstract

The work seeks to discuss how colonization in the state of Para established various narratives about the region, placing groups of European origins and their lifestyles at the center, and all other groups on the margin. This was maintained throughout the state's history from the colonial period until the time known as the Belle Époque, the period of economic boom in the region that, seeking local urban development, based on its public policies on an ideal of life in European cities. Therefore, I discuss how these visions are posted in the Museum of the State of Pará, which is coined as a historical museum, and therefore, aims to tell the history of the state. This hierarchization of cultures and peoples at the expense of others, based on the idea of race, that is maintained even with the independence of countries or with decolonization is known as coloniality. Thus, the analysis takes place critically on the museum's long-term exhibition, seeing who is in the spotlight, who is not, how cultural groups are shown, what is shown, how sensitization is made, etc. These actions are made to show how coloniality is posted in the museum's representations. The work also points out as follows are certain representations to combat these colonializing perspectives, based on the notion of decoloniality as a way of undoing a perspective of cultural construct hierarchization. For this, the new museological perspectives point out that museums, especially stories that play the role of legitimizing what is the truth, must have a social role that seeks to solve current problems, mainly discursive ones, which historically gave unilaterally and have high coercive power over society. Finally, when there is no discursive equivalence and when colonizing perspectives are transported to the region's current times, by not discussing or linking them to local problems, the museum sometimes ends up being a reinforcer of these hierarchical and prejudiced perspectives.